Flavius Hilaris sprang up eagerly.
"Didius Falco – Aelia Camilla, my wife." The one in crimson.
I had no great hopes. He was a dedicated long-term diplomat: he would have married a good, plain woman who could serve sweetmeats to a governor from the proper shape of dish, or be polite to a tribal king for three hours at a time, then remove the royal paw from her knee without giving offence.
I was right. Aelia Camilla, the senator's sister, was a good, plain woman. She could do all that. But she had vividly eloquent eyes. It would be a brave king or governor who took liberties with her.
Though her husband did. As soon as he had jumped up to bring me in, he abandoned his own couch and relaxed beside her instead, dropping a hand onto her thigh as if it were quite natural for a man to fondle his wife. Neither looked embarrassed. It would never happen in Rome. I felt amazed.
Decimus Camillus had spoken of his sister with affection. She was younger than him, an afterthought in their family, still somewhere short of forty, a shy, private woman excelling in her public role. She smiled at me, a special smile, which she used so well it seemed real.
"So you are Sosia Camillina's friend!"
"Not a very good one," I confessed. Then I drowned my sorrows in those sympathetic eyes.
Good, plain women meant nothing to me, yet I took to Sosia's aunt at once. This was the sweet-natured lady a boy dreams of when he decides he has been lost at birth by his real mother and is being brought up by scolding strangers in a foreign land… Oh I was fantasizing merrily. But I was whirling through a personal nightmare and had just racked up fourteen hundred miles.
Friend Gaius motioned me to a couch, but they had a brazier for extra cheer so I perched on a small stool near that, holding out my hands to the charcoal glow. In a different situation I would have stayed silent about my discovery upstairs, but I prefer to hit clients with frankness, then hear them squeal.
"I gather somebody picked over my belongings. Can't have been pleasant. Thousand miles of unwashed under tunics -"
"It won't happen twice!" Hilaris said, smiling. "Just cautious," he added. It was not an apology. Nor was I disturbed. A professional risk, which we acknowledged to one another with polite nods on both sides.
A violent voice broke in so abruptly I jumped.
"You have a bracelet that belonged to my cousin!"
I half turned: the stiff young woman with the little girl. Eyes like burnt caramel in a bitter almond face. Golden hoop earrings, each hung with a fine carnelian bead. Suddenly I understood; this was my senator's daughter, this was Helena.
She was sitting in a half-round basket weave chair, the child happily squirming on and off her lap. (I knew she had no children of her own, so the little girl must belong here.) No one would call the young woman plain, but in appeal she raised no competition for her aunt. She had her father's domineering eyebrows, but her air of tight-lipped distaste reminded me of his brother Publius.
"You should return it, Falco!"
Females with loud voices and bad manners were never my type. Thanks, but I'll keep it."
"I gave it to her!"
"She gave it to me."
I could see why the senator was so attached to his kind-eyed sister, if this was the spiteful virago he had spawned himself.
As the tension flashed between us, Aelia Camilla interrupted, a note of reproof in her light voice. "It seems to me we shall all need to be adult in our loyalties! Didius Falco, you were fond of my poor niece?" She was the classic type of Roman matron; Aelia Camilla did not permit angry scenes.
After thirty years of deflecting my mother, questions about women slide by me.
"I'm so sorry!" Aelia Camilla reproached herself. That was unforgivable."
These open, intelligent people were shaking my confidence. I managed to reply, "Madam, anyone who knew your niece would have been fond of her."
She smiled sadly. We both realized my mundane compliment was not what she had meant.
Aelia Camilla glanced at her husband, who took over the conversation again.
"I received a formal brief, of course, on why you were coming to Britain, though I should like to hear your own account of your motives," he put to me with his acceptable bluntness. "Do you blame yourself?"
"I blame the man who killed her, sir," I stated. I saw his thinning eyebrows lift. "But until he is identified, I take responsibility."
The woman I had quarrelled with extracted herself from the child then swiftly left the room. She was tall. Watching her, I remembered bleakly how once I had liked women who were tall.
Since it pays to be hypocritical, I spoke up with gravelly respect. "Have I just had the honour of offending the noble daughter of my client?"
Aelia Camilla was looking anxious over the way the young girl had stormed out. Hilaris gave his finger to the baby, which clasped hold of it while still asleep, kicking out haphazardly with one foot. Evidently he took a wry view of tantrums. Rather than grin too broadly, he concentrated on reattaching his baby's tiny felt boot as he spoke. "Falco, my apologies! That is Helena Justina, my wife's niece. I ought to have introduced you I believe there is a suggestion you should escort our Helena home?"
I held his eye long enough to share the joke, then replied without commitment that I believed there was.
XXIII
I felt gloomy enough, without a confrontation with this angry witch Helena Justina. She would have a long trek home, across barbarian territory, so I understood why the senator was so keen to provide her with some sort of professional escort although after the disaster of my involvement with Sosia Camillina, it seemed ludicrous that he had selected me. I wanted to be helpful to him, but now I had seen her, the prospect of close contact with his bad-tempered offspring started to loom depressingly. Once, winning her over might have been a challenge. Now I was in too much pain from Sosia's death to raise the energy. Only the fact that I liked Decimus Camillus Verus gave me patience to deal with this situation at all.
The night we met, Helena Justina's finer qualities if she had any were lost on me. For reasons I could not begin to imagine, she held me in contempt. I could tolerate rudeness, but she even seemed insubordinate to her uncle and aunt.
She was not gone long. I suspected she could not bear to miss the chance of finding more to despise in me. When she barged back I ignored her. With hardened types it is the best way.
All the same, I was curious. Just because you give up women does not mean you give up looking. She had a brutal nature but a bonny figure, and I quite liked the way she twisted up her hair. I noticed the little Flavian girl ran back to her at once; not everyone can charm a child like that. So here she was: my lost soul's famous cousin.
Their fathers were brothers but they were not at all alike. Helena Justina was by then twenty-something, yet she appeared completely self-possessed. She burned with a strong, calm flame beside which the immature Sosia would have seemed positively foolish. She was everything that Sosia had promised to be and could never now become. I hated her for that, and she knew I hated her. She bitterly resented me.
When I end up at strange houses I try to fit in. Although exhausted, I sat tight. After a while, Aelia Camilla excused herself and left the room, taking both the baby and her little girl. I saw my host follow his wife with his eyes, then soon he went out too. Helena Justina and I stayed there alone.
To say our eyes met would imply too much. What happened was that I looked at her, because when a man is left alone with a woman in a quiet room it is the natural thing for him to do. She stared back at me. I had no idea why she was doing that.